how bad is it to use dynamic datastuctures on an embedded system?

Question

So in an embedded systems unit, that i\'m taking at uni next year, we will learn that dynamic data structures are a bad thing to have in an embedded system program. but the

Answer 1

I don't know about the Atmel MEGA169, but the MEGA168, which I suppose is related to the 169, has only 1024 bytes of SRAM. It also has only 16k of program ROM, and is relatively slow compared to modern computers. So it is limited in memory, program size and speed.

In my experience with AVR assembler programming, it takes effort to cram as much functionality into the PIC as possible. The amount of overhead needed to use dynamic data structures (extra memory use, extra instructions needed to pull and push the data from SRAM, keep track of which dynamic variable resides where, moving memory blocks around when variables 'in between' get deleted....) just doesn't justify the merits.

So even if the compiler implements it I'd stick with static data structures for performance.